EFI's Swoope gets a big raise and a golden parachute

TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Rick Scott’s jobs czar will get a hefty bump in pay and a golden parachute.

Gray Swoope, chief executive of the semi-private Enterprise Florida Inc., will see his salary grow from $230,000 to $275,000. His allowable bonus next year will increase from $70,000 to $100,000.

And if the governor should fire him – or if Scott loses re-election and another governor doesn’t keep him on the job – Swoope for the first time will have a severance payout of $137,500 written into his contract.

The agency approved the bump in pay without any discussion Thursday during its meeting in Coral Gables.

The agency’s directors, mostly corporate executives, have heaped praise on the performance so far of Swoope, whom Scott hired away from Mississippi after being elected.

Swoope himself said before the vote that Florida’s job-recruitment strategy was working and should be preserved.

“It is so important to keep the moment going that we have. Everybody is talking about what’s going on in Florida.”

Enterprise Florida says that this past fiscal year it was responsible for 25,393 “new and retained” jobs and $1.9 billion in capital investment.

Although Swoope is not technically a public employee, his agency is 78 percent subsidized by taxpayer dollars – despite an unmet 2011 legislative mandate that private companies pay half the public-private agency’s costs.

And he holds a high-profile post in Scott’s economic-development team, tasked with selling the governor’s jobs agenda to lawmakers.

Making that sell has been a tough task in recent years, as the state’s heavy investment of hundreds of millions of tax-dollars in corporate incentives has come under scrutiny.

Last spring, lawmakers cut funding for incentives from $111 million to $45 million, although Scott and EFI had lobbied for $278 million.

Next year, Swoope and Scott want to boost tax-dollars for incentives to $95 million; loosen wage-requirements for employers that want to tap into “capital investment” tax credits; let companies given certain “targeted industry” credits to sell them off; and provide $3 million in “matching funds” for a Florida branding effort lawmakers declined to fund last spring.

Last week, a national non-profit organization called Good Jobs First singled out a handful of states mostly governed by Republicans where incentives have fallen under heavier scrutiny. In Florida, the watchdog group Integrity Florida has said EFI is a business-backed front that engages in “pay to play” activities and hasn’t shown its tax-incentive programs are producing jobs.

Integrity Florida, along with The Tea Party Network, Progress Florida and Americans for Prosperity, issued a statement calling it "fiscally irresponsible for any state official to get a two-year contract and golden parachute near the end of a governor's term."

"Florida needs to work to build a business environment where every employer matters, not just the connected."

Florida Chamber of Commerce President Mark Wilson used Thursday’s meeting to blast criticisms of Enterprise Florida as a union-backed attack on “what makes America great.”